Learning From Hegel What
Philosophy is All About:
for the Metaphysics of Reason; against the Priority of Meaning[1]

Jim Kreines
jkreines@cmc.edu

DRAFT, PLEASE DO NOT CITE, comments welcome

When it comes to Hegel, disagreement begins with even
the most basic questions. Recent debates have focused specifically on
so-called “non-metaphysical” interpretations, which raise the most basic
question of all: what is Hegel’s philosophy about?

But it can be difficult to state what of philosophical
substance is really of issue between opponents in these Hegel debates—at
least in a manner that could be agreed to by all sides. As Redding puts it, “it is still not clear which
issues dividing them are substantive and which are ultimately verbal.”[1]
Certainly the opposing sides make characteristic claims. “Metaphysical”
interpreters say that Hegel’s ambitious goals—for example, to give an
account of “the absolute”—clearly express metaphysical ambitions.[2]
“Non-metaphysical” interpreters argue that they have a trump card in a
superior ability to make sense of Hegel’s aim of engaging philosophically
with Kant’s critique of metaphysics, rather than merely assuming the
viability of a project which Kant has specifically argues is hopeless.[3] But
insofar as this disagreement is about whether Hegel pursues “metaphysics,”
differences may simply spring from different uses of that term. True,
“non-metaphysical” interpreters more specifically compare Hegel’s view with
anti-realism, internal realism, or other rejections of “metaphysical
realism” or “realism.”[4] But
philosophical disagreements about realism are a paradigm case of the lack of
agreement between opponents on the issues at stake: anti-realists tend to
see a dispute fundamentally in semantics concerning reference and the truth
predicate, realists a dispute fundamentally in metaphysics or ontology
concerning what exists.[5] So
if the Hegel debates concern whether Hegel is realist or anti-realist, then
this is again cause to worry whether the sides are talking past one another.
Further, some who once called their view “non-metaphysical” now argue that
this label produces misunderstanding of the approach, and prefer the label
“post-Kantian,”[6]
emphasizing Hegel’s engagement with Kant. But my view requires me to contest
the implication. For I argue that my metaphysical approach is a better way
to understand Hegel’s philosophical engagement with Kant. And so the debate
seems drawn ever farther toward terminological questions.

But I will argue here that there is a surprising kind
of philosophical substance to the debates about Hegel. For they expose a
crucial philosophical question whose import is otherwise easy to miss: the
question of metaphilosophy. The question is, what is philosophy itself most
fundamentally about? Or, what issues are most fundamental in philosophy?

Thinking in terms of metaphilosophy, in this sense, we
will be able characterize the debate in substantively philosophical terms
that all parties should accept. What distinguishes “non-metaphysical”
interpretations is this: their Hegel takes as fundamental the project of
considering our cognition in order to construct an account in epistemology
of the possibility of knowledge and/or an account in semantics of the
possibility of meaningful thought (section 1). This does not mean a
renunciation of all involvement in metaphysics in any and all senses. It
means rather that the only legitimate metaphysics will be one that is shaped
so as to avoid conflict with, and to play a role in or rest upon the more
fundamental project in epistemology and/or semantics. If the emphasis is
specifically on the fundamentality of accounting for the possibility of
knowledge, then we could mark this priority by referring to an
“epistemology-first” metaphilosophy. If the emphasis is rather on accounting
for the possibility of meaningful
thought, cognition or experience, then we can call it a “semantics-first”
metaphilosophy. Insofar as both take as prior consideration of our own
cognition and its capacities, we could speak more generally of a
“cognition-first” metaphilosophy. Insofar as the so-called
“non-metaphysical” readings of Hegel ultimately will rest on emphasis on
meaning, I will generally call them “semantics-first” interpretations of
Hegel.

But I reject all forms of epistemology- or
semantics-first metaphilosophy. And I think that Hegel rejects them too.
Articulating a substantial and successful alternative, however, requires
care with the term “metaphysics.” Some people may begin by thinking that
philosophy is fundamentally concerned with problems about meaningful thought
about or knowledge of an independent world. They will then tend to take
“metaphysics” to assume that some things are absolutelyindependent of our perspective, and that we can potentially know them;
they will tend to take “metaphysics” to be inquiry into the absolutely
perspective-independent. But we can think of metaphysics differently, and
must if we are to understand Hegel (section 2). We need not think of what I
call the “metaphysics of perspective-independence.” We should think instead
in terms of what I call the “metaphysics of reason.” Metaphysical inquiry,
in this sense, is not founded on any special notion of, or assumptions
about, perspective-independence. It is founded instead on the basic notion
of one thing being any kind of reason
for another, or because of
another. For example, a monist metaphysics (in this sense) would hold that
the whole of everything is the reason for the existence and natures of the
parts; an atomist metaphysics would hold the reverse. Perhaps inquiry into
reasons, in this sense, is also what is meant when Aristotle’s
Metaphysics specifies its concern
with “primary causes and principles.” But my aim here is not historical
comparison, but rather explanation of this kind of metaphysics and its
lasting philosophical appeal in independently accessible terms.

The Hegel debates, then, concern what issues are
fundamental. Some say that Hegel’s fundamental project is to account for the
possibility of knowledge and (especially) meaningful thought. My alternative
is to read Hegel’s project as fundamentally within the metaphysics of
reason.

But my opponents will still claim to best make sense of
Hegel’s philosophical engagement with Kant’s critique of metaphysics.
Matching this trump card requires distinguishing two stands of Kant’s
critique. One strand is an epistemology-first critique: philosophy must
begin by considering our cognition and constructing an account of the
conditions of the possibility of knowledge, which will then show us to be
unfit for the projects pursued by pre-Kantian metaphysicians. But Kant’s
critique would be weaker if it merely attacked metaphysics from the foreign
territory of epistemology. It is stronger insofar as there is another
strand: Kant also attacks metaphysics from within, or argues that it
contradicts itself from within. That is the argument of the “Transcendental
Dialectic,” which makes clear that Kant’s most immediate interest and target
is the metaphysics of reason, rather than the metaphysics of
perspective-independence (section 3).

I can then match my opponents’ trump card. They see
Hegel’s basic project as carrying yet further Kant’s attempt to account for
the conditions of the possibility of knowledge and meaningful cognition in
the “Transcendental Analytic” from the first
Critique, putting this to a
different and more radically anti-skeptical end. But I too read Hegel as
carrying Kantian considerations yet further. I read Hegel’s basic project as
carrying further Kant’s consideration of reason and metaphysics in the
“Transcendental Dialectic,” putting this to a different and more
metaphysically constructive end (section 4).

Once the metaphysics of reason approach to Hegel is
clear, and the trump card matched, the advantages are easy to see. For it is
then easy to see that Hegel himself prominently denies that philosophy must
first or most fundamentally consider cognition and construct of accounts of
our cognitive capacities (section 5). Further, this is not bad news for
attempts to relate Hegel to contemporary analytic philosophy; my approach
does just as well establishing such relations. And, finally, Hegel’s
metaphysics of reason can help us to better understand the philosophical
issues themselves. Of course, there is no space here to definitively defend
a comprehensive interpretation of Hegel, let alone a comprehensive
metaphilosophy. But we can use these terms to better appreciate the
underlying terrain on which wars in philosophy are still fought today. In
that sense, we can learn something important from Hegel with respect to the
question of what philosophy itself is all about.

1. Metaphilosophical Diagnosis of the Hegel Debates

I begin by giving the so-called “non-metaphysical”
story about Hegel’s engagement with Kant a sympathetic formulation, in order
to see how it depends on “semantics-first” metaphilosophy. So imagine
someone—call her SF for “semantics-first”—telling the basic story in three
steps:

SF: First,pre-Kantian philosophers have
discussed things they thought we could know about.
It doesn’t matter what things—call
them “X”. But Kant argues that they have all taken some X to be independent
of our knowledge or cognition, something which can in turn explain the
possibility of our knowledge and cognition, and something which sets the
standard to which our knowledge and cognition is responsible. In other
words, they take the standard to be a way of grasping of X in its
independence of our point of view—something like a God’s eye view. This
package of pre-critical views is called “metaphysical realism” or just
“realism.”[7]

I should interject in my own voice that SF here uses
the term “realism” to refer to a view about the explanation of the
possibility of knowledge and its standard; it is not at base a claim about
the existence of a world independent of us. I will continue to use it in
SF’s way, since I have no special need of any use of the term. She
continues:

SF:
Second, Kant rejects“realism” in
this sense, taking it to guarantee skepticism, because we could never know
how things would look from a God’s eye view. Kant’s alternative is
reflection on our own cognition, aiming to demonstrate that we fix from
within a distinction between the subjective and the objective—now in a sense
of “objective” that is internal to our cognition, and opposed to a
pre-critical sense of absolute independence from us. So Kant’s philosophy
parallels 20th century rejections of “metaphysical realism” in
favor of a kind of “internal realism.”

I should interject again that I don’t seek to defend
this reading of Kant, but only to tell this one kind of story about Kant and
Hegel, which continues:

SF: Third,Hegel argues that Kant should have
gone farther. Kant should have taken his argument in epistemology,
concerning the possibility of knowledge,
and extended it more consistently also
to semantics, concerning the possibility of meaningful
thought. More specifically, Kant claims that we cannot have knowledge of
things as they are in themselves. But just as Kant admits that we cannot
explain the possibility of knowledge of such things supposed to be
absolutely perspective-independent, Hegel argues that we cannot even explain
the possibility of meaningful thought about them. To assume otherwise
would be to retain a semantic version of the same “realism” rejected in
epistemology. To complete the parallel with the above, the conclusion is
that we can meaningfully refer to an objective world only insofar as we fix
from within our cognition a distinction between the subjective and the
objective—again in a sense of “objective” that is internal rather than the
pre-critical sense of absolute perspective-independence. So we must give up
as meaningless claims about absolutely independent things in themselves,
even Kant’s claims to be ignorant of them.

That is the basic “non-metaphysical” story. Redding has a nice encapsulation of the idea
that the Hegelian worry about Kant is that he should apply his
epistemological points more completely to semantics:

Kant’s combination of conceivability but unknowability seems to take away
with the one hand a quasi-divine epistemic take on the world – the so-called
‘God’s-eye view’ – only to return something like a semantic version of it
with the other… (2007, 222)

McDowell’s version of “Hegel's Idealism as Radicalization of Kant” takes its
departure (2001, 527) from Pippin’s work. And the crucial elements of recent
versions generally do stem from Pippin’s
Hegel’s Idealism. The story there
is as follows:

RP: Hegel’s basic
project focuses on meaning or intelligibility in the sense of considering
the conditions of the possibility of “any intelligible experience of an
object.” Hegel’s view is built around acceptance, specifically, of Kant’s
claim about “the spontaneity and reflexivity of any intelligible experience
of an object” (1989, 12). This key claim is a revolt against “realism,” in
that the spontaneity of our cognition explains the possibility of
intelligible experience, rather than the objects themselves. Realism
generally supports skepticism, or “realist skeptical doubts” (e.g. p. 107).Even Kant’s own
“‘thing in itself’ skepticism” (p. 6) retains and rests on a residual
realism which should, more consistently, be eliminated. Hegel rejects all
realism, undercutting realist skepticism, in an attempt to reach the
conclusion that our own knowledge is second to no other intelligible
standard, and so is “absolute” (p. 94).

It is easy to see why some who tell this story are
rethinking the “non-metaphysical” label. For the point is not that Hegel
limits himself to only modest knowledge about our own cognition
as opposed to knowledge of reality. Rather, in Hegel’s hands,
Kantian reflection on the necessary conditions of meaning and knowledge
yields knowledge of
reality—knowledge that is not in any intelligible respect limited or less
than absolute.[8]
So the idea is that Hegel is an “anti-realist,” but of a radically
anti-skeptical variety. And if
“metaphysics” just means inquiry into
what there is, then the point is that Hegel’s philosophy comes to
metaphysical conclusions in that sense.

But, by the same token, this story has oriented its
understanding of Hegel around a debate whose philosophical substance can be
elusive. If all sides could agree about Hegel’s conclusions are
“metaphysical,” depending on how that term is used, then there is a threat
that the debate is merely verbal. Further, attempting to locate Hegel
relative to disagreements about anti-realism, brings us to disagreements
facing the same threat: Realists will argue that anti-realism simply must be
a form of skepticism, social constructivism, or some other denial of
objectivity. Anti-skeptical anti-realists will answer that this is a
misunderstanding, because their view is anti-skeptical; they will
counter-charge that realists conceive of objectivity in a manner that is
incoherent. Realists will respond that they do not hold the incoherent
conception attributed to them. Anti-realists will charge that realists
assume an objectionable account of the truth predicate in semantics.
Realists will respond that the debate is not about semantics but about what
exists. Etc. Those of us not involved in the fray will naturally wonder
whether there can be a substantive philosophical debate if the sides so
entirely fail to agree about what is being debated.

Fortunately, I need not try to clarify the opposing
positions on the object level of debates about anti-realism. For my view is
that it is a mistake to read Hegel as if his basic project were to take any
stand in anything like a debate about anti-realism. For my purposes, the
most important feature of the story above about Kant and Hegel is the
dependence on a view at the meta-level, or a metaphilosophy. The dependence
is clear if we examine the need to argue against an opponent, rather than
just tell a story. It is clearest if we consider an especially modest sort
of pre-critical metaphysician—call him PCM. He might say:

PCM: Look,
no philosophy can explain everything.
Everyone must take something for granted. I begin with our knowledge of
ordinary things, like rocks and trees and their parts, and then I use this
to address the metaphysical issues of interest to me—for example, the
question of whether these objects have indivisible atomic parts. SF seems to
think that I am thereby leaving unanswered some other question about the
possibility of knowledge of such things, or the possibility of meaningfully
thinking of them. But, if so, then these are questions that I have no
interest in answering. Nor, since we clearly can meaningfully think about
trees, and most will agree that we can know about them, do I have any need
of an account of the conditions of the possibility of such meaning and
knowledge.

Now the “non-metaphysical” story about Kant and Hegel
begins with the idea that wherever
we find such metaphysics, without a prior Kantian reflection on cognition,
we are essentially dealing with objectionably “realist” account of the
possibility of knowledge. But what could the argument be for this claim
against modest PCM, who takes no interest in and does without any account of
this topic at all? As far as I can see, there can be an argument here, but
only on the basis of strong metaphilosophical claim that the consideration
of our cognition and the problem of accounting for the possibility of
knowledge is fundamental to philosophy in a way that makes it inescapable.
SF, for example, might defend herself as follows:

SF: Claims about
any rocks or trees or any X presume the possibility of knowledge of X. So
such claims always raise philosophical problems about the explanation of the
possibility of this knowledge. If PCM thinks he can ignore those issues, he
is mistaken. For he is implicitly committed to some explanation of knowledge
of X. Further, such explanations can either be realist or anti-realist. But
PCM’s account includes no analysis of our own cognition, only discussions of
the objects of knowledge, X. So he cannot account for the possibility of
knowledge in an anti-realist manner, in terms of the features of our
cognition, such as its spontaneity. So he is committed, know it or not, to
the realist view that the objects of knowledge, X, explain the possibility
of our having knowledge of them. But an explanans must be distinct from an
explanandum, or there is no real explanation. So PCM implicitly takes X to
be something independent of our cognition. And that means that PCM
implicitly takes our knowledge to be explained by a standard that is
independent of our perspective—which is the “realist” view that will
inevitably support skepticism, etc.

This is essentially an argument of the “you are either
with us or against us” sort: no one can be neutral, because the issue is too
important, and there are only two kinds of response. And SF will eventually
turn this general line of argument against Kant as well. We could just as
well imagine a modest Kantian, who claims ignorance of things in themselves.
SF will have to argue that any such claim is committed to an account in
semantics of the possibility of meaningful thought about things in
themselves. And that any such semantics must be either realist or
anti-realist. And that realism must be rejected in semantics too,
undercutting “realist skeptical doubts” including “‘thing in itself’
skepticism.” So the arguments in
what was once called “non-metaphysical” readings of Hegel must depend on the
metaphilosophical commitment to the fundamentality or inescapability of
issues about the possibility of knowledge and, especially, meaning. And we
can call this a “priority of semantics” or “semantics-first” approach to
Hegel.

Granted, there are any number of ways of developing a
“semantics-first” approach that could be more balanced in
other respects. Consider the quietist, Q, who argues for this view:

Q: Constructive
philosophy must be avoided altogether, because it will inevitably involve
commitment to either a “realist” or “anti-realist” account of the
possibility of knowledge and meaning, and neither is acceptable.

True, this view gives priority to neither realism nor
anti-realism. But the view is still driven by a priority claim at the
meta-level: issues about knowledge and meaning are supposedly so fundamental
that entanglement in one or another position on just those issues becomes
inescapable for any constructive
philosophy.

Or consider the defender of a seemingly balanced
semantics, BS, who will say this:

BS: Hegel argues
that, in order to account in semantics for the possibility of meaningful
thought, we must recognize certain ontological commitments about what there
is. So Hegel takes such ontology to be just as legitimate, for this reason,
as semantics.

But even if this results in a balance between semantics
and ontology at the object-level, what is distinctive about the philosophy
here is the way it is shaped by a priority-claim at the meta-level: ontology
is legitimate only becauseand
insofar as a kind of ontology can avoid conflict with an account in
semantics of the possibility of meaning, and only because and insofar
ontology shaped in this way can contribute to semantics. I will argue that
Hegel’s project is quite the opposite: he takes a kind metaphysics as
fundamental, discussing meaning and knowledge where these do not conflict
with but are necessary to advance the fundamentally metaphysical project;
for example, discussion of knowledge and meaning will be necessary in a
metaphysical account of what we ourselves are and how we fit into the rest
of reality—not in the sense of an account of the conditions of the
possibility of knowledge or meaning, but rather an account of the ways in
which knowledge and meaning make us what we are.

2. Distinguishing the Metaphysics of Reason

Different understandings of “metaphysics” will agree
that it is an inquiry into something that is supposed to be privileged or
prior, disagreeing on the relevant senses of priority or privilege. The most
minimal understanding would take metaphysics to be inquiry into
what exists—or what is privileged merely insofar as it exists rather
than not. Some might prefer to call that “ontology,” but it makes no
difference here. More important is that those who look at philosophy through
the epistemological lens of problems concerning the possibility of knowledge
of a world independent of our perspective will tend to take “metaphysics” to
be inquiry into whatever is privileged in the sense of being
perspective-independent. If that is right, then to read as metaphysics any
project of accounting for “the absolute” would be to read it as inquiry into
something supposed to be absolutely perspective-independent. But it is
crucial that this is only one way of understanding metaphysics; it is what I
call “the metaphysics of perspective-independence.” We can distinguish “the
metaphysics of reason,” which would be inquiry into whatever is privileged
insofar as it is a reason for something else. Thinking in this way, a
metaphysical account of “the absolute” would be a very different
undertaking: inquiry into reasons that are most basic, fundamental or
complete—regardless of whether those reasons are independent of us or not.

To see what I mean by “reasons,” consider again this
example of a recognizably metaphysical debate: Some monists will argue that
the one whole of all reality is the
reason why there are many parts and/or why the parts are as they are or
do what they do. Some atomists will take the opposite view: atomic parts are
the reason why there is a whole of
everything, and why that the whole is as it is and does what it does.[9]
Perhaps others would develop and defend a sense in which the whole and parts
can be the reasons for one another. But, in any case, note that the sense of
“reason” here is not epistemic: the question is not whether we conclude that
there are parts for the reason that we know there to be a whole, or vice
versa. Further, the question here has nothing to do with whether the whole
or the parts is more independent of our perspective. It is open to the
monist, for example, to say that they are precisely equal in
perspective-independence; the point is that the former is prior in a
different sense: the whole is the reason why there are parts, and why they
are as they are. So this inquiry need not presuppose any special conception
of perspective-independence. This is a dispute within the metaphysics of
reason.

Further, this sort of debate can be of interest to
almost anyone. Anti-realists who prefer a coherence theory of truth can take
an interest in the question just as much as those who prefer a
correspondence theory of truth, those who think there is nothing interesting
to be said about the truth predicate, and those who just don’t have a
position concerning these options. The metaphysics of reason in itself is
not built on any of these specific notions of truth, but by what it seeks
the truth about: about what is a
reason for what.[10]

Similarly, imagine you hold the radically
anti-skeptical form of anti-realism that some people see in Hegel, namely:
we can have knowledge of the “objective” world in an internal sense; and we
cannot even meaningfully or intelligibly engage with any competing accounts
of objectivity as absolute or external perspective-independence. If you hold
thatview, then it will make sense to ask you questions about the
objective world you recognize, including the question: what is the reason
for what in this objective world? And since your view is radically
anti-skeptical—you have dismissed as unintelligible what you call “realist
skeptical doubts” including Kant’s claim to ignorance of things in
themselves—you will not say that we cannot in principle know the answer to
such questions about what is a reason for what in the objective world. So
even the sort of anti-realism some see in Hegel would not preclude
engagement with the metaphysics of reason.

Perhaps some will think that “metaphysics” must always
involve positing a supposedly higher realm, or ground
beyond that of finite persons. Perhaps that assumption is explained
by a tendency to think of the metaphysics of perspective-independence, and
thus to assume that any metaphysics must privilege something independent of
us. But being free of such an assumption is an advantage of thinking instead
in terms of reasons. Consider this sort of question: is there anything
beyond us finite persons that is a reason why we exist and are as we are? It
would be odd if our understanding of what sorts of
questions,
issues or
inquiries are “metaphysical” would then classify one
answer as metaphysical (the
affirmative answer, insofar as it posits a beyond) and another answer as not
metaphysical (the negative answer, insofar as it does not). I would take
this as a recognizably metaphysical
question—a question about what sorts of reasons there are. And then we
can more naturally say that different answers equally state positions within
metaphysics. “Yes” is the position that there is such a beyond, which I
would call “the metaphysics of the beyond”; “no” is the equally metaphysical
position that there is no such thing.

Returning to Hegel, then, when I say that I prefer a
metaphysical interpretation, I mean that Hegel most fundamentally pursues
inquiry into what is a reason for what. I do
not mean that Hegel’s basic goal is to address in any particular
manner the question of how to account for the possibility of knowledge or
meaning—whether realist, anti-realist, or whatever. I mean that addressing
such debates is not Hegel’s basic aim, and so not the way to understand his
philosophy. Rather, his basic aim is to construct a metaphysics of reason.

To see Hegel’s engagement with the metaphysics of
reason, consider the initial example the laws of nature. The natural
sciences seek knowledge of what is and what is not a law of nature. But
there is a philosophical question here too: what is it to be a law of
nature? On a “humean” approach, a law will just be a regularity or a
generalization stating a regularity. (It is a matter of debate whether Hume
himself is a “humean,” in this sense.[11])
Anti-humeans hold that a law is something else, something which
governs events, or something
responsible for which regularities
hold. Recent humeans have emphasized that theirs is a “non-governing”
conception of laws (Beebee 2000). For if laws are just regularities, then
they more summarize than
govern events.

Hegel clearly holds that the laws of nature are the
reason for the events that fall
under them, or that laws govern.
Consider the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, explaining how an idea
of Anaxagoras’ provides the basis for further progress in philosophy:

Anaxagoras was the first to enunciate the doctrine that understanding
generally, or reason, governs the world… The movement of the solar system is
governed by unalterable laws; these laws are its reason. But neither the sun
nor the planets which revolve around it are conscious of them. It is man who
abstracts the laws from empirical reality and acquires knowledge of them.
Any idea of this kind, that there is reason in nature or that it is governed
by unalterable universal laws, does not strike us as in any way strange…
(LPH 12:23/34)

And
Hegel notes how philosophy builds on the basic idea about reason or
governing. Plato builds on it, even while rejecting the way in which
Anaxagoras sought reasons merely in “Atmosphere, Ether, Water, and the
like.” Indeed, Hegel here treats exceptionless laws of nature governing the
motion of matter as a form of
reason in the world—but he will also argue that this is the
least complete or absolute form of
reason. Still, for now I focus on the sense in which laws are at least one
form: the laws are the “reason” for the rotation of the planets; and this is
just to say that their movements are “governed” by laws. The point is not
epistemic—it is not that knowledge of laws is our “reason” for believing or
concluding that the planets rotate. Rather, the laws are a form of
“governing” or “reason in nature.” The same commitment is clear in Hegel’s
rejection of empiricism at the beginning of the
Encyclopedia, which formulates and
rejects the approach I call “humean,” according to which “universal
notions, principles, and laws”
(§38) signify nothing over and above “alterations that follow one after the
other, and … objects that lie side by side” (§39).

Those who favor humeanism about laws might try to argue
that the very idea of a law of nature being a “reason,” or “governing,” is
so unclear as to be meaningless. But thinking in terms of Hegel’s interest
in reasons of all forms reveals the objection as powerless. For both sides
in this debate are equally addressing an issue within the metaphysics of
reason: both sides have a position on what is a reason for what. The humeans
accept one form of reason in the world—they hold that what actually happens
is the reason why there are laws
(if there are, because laws are just patterns or regularities in what
happens). Some recent humeans say specifically that it is “in virtue of”
what happens that there are laws;[12]
or, there is a form of “ontological” “grounding” of laws by what happens, or
a “reduction” of laws to what happens.[13]
These are all proposed ways of understanding the sense in which what happens
is supposed to be the reason for
the laws. An anti-humean, like Hegel, simply holds the reverse: in cases
where there are laws, like the rotation of the planets, the laws are the
reason for those happenings. So both sides are talking about reason, but
they see different sorts of reason-relation moving in opposite directions.
Since both sides are talking about different forms of the same general
notion, humeans cannot object that their opponents are too obscure.

Granted, some today might wish to reject both sides in
this debate, finding anti-humean talk of “governing” and humean talk of
“ontological grounding” bothtoo
obscure—perhaps because neither is analyzable in terms of ordinary
causality. But this objection too is weak, because it assumes that causality
itself is unproblematic, or something not in need of more basic
philosophical comprehension. It is however obvious that there is
philosophical debate about what causality is. And the debate is similar to
the debate about laws. There is, for example, a humean conception of
causality: for x to cause y is just for X’s and Y’s to be constantly
conjoined throughout space and time. And there are anti-humeans about
causality. And this is again a dispute about reason: humeans hold that what
happens is the reason why there is causality; anti-humeans hold that, where
there are causes, these are the reasons why things happen as they do.

What we are discovering, as we step through these
debates, is the fundamentality of the question of what is a reason for what.
We need the basic and general notion of one thing being a reason for another
in order to engage any of these
debates. And so we should accept that notion as basic, and proceed to
consider what specific forms of reason there really are, which directions
they run in different cases, and how they relate to one another.

Further, the philosophical debates in question cannot
be directly resolved by the natural sciences. No matter which specific laws
natural science might uncover, doing so will not itself answer the
underlying question about what it is to be a law, or the form and direction
of reason in terms of which lawhood is best understood. And part of what is
at issue here is how different natural sciences relate to one another: are
they all seeking reasons in a similar sense, or in divergent senses? If
divergent, then how do these different reasons relate? So part of the aim of
answering these questions within the metaphysics of reasons is to rationally
and systematically comprehend the natural sciences themselves, the specific
sorts of reasons they seek, and their relations. So although the sciences
seek forms of reason in the world, the metaphysics of reason is
distinguished from them in that it seeks to understand those forms of reason
and how they relate.

Those who prefer a semantics-first metaphilosophy might
see all such issues about laws, monism, causes, etc. as a series of
technical issues in isolated or minor areas of philosophy—as “merely” issues
in the philosophy of science, for example, peripheral to the core concerns
of philosophy with perspective-independence, knowledge, and meaning. But my
point here is just that there is an alternative way to look at it. When we
think in terms of the metaphysics of reason, we see rather a surprising
thread linking issues throughout metaphysics. Take the example of the humean
views above: they all stem from a wonderfully clear and
incredibly comprehensive humean
metaphysics—all there is to
reality, says the humean, is a series of disconnected events arranged in
space and time; this arrangement is the reason for
everything there is—for laws,
causality, necessity, etc.—it can all be explained in these same terms. As
David Lewis formulates the form of humeanism so important in recent analytic
metaphysics, it is “the doctrine that all there is to the world is a vast
mosaic of local matters of particular fact, just one little thing and then
another” (1986, ix).

I think that Hegel’s basic aim is to defend a
comparably comprehensive position within the metaphysics of reason—albeit
one that is about as far away as you can get in content and simplicity as
compared to humeanism. The humean view finds the fundamental at the bottom:
the reason for everything real is found at the bottom, with “one little
thing and then another.” Hegel’s view will find the fundamental at the top,
although in a surprising sense. This will mean that the example of Hegel’s
anti-humean position on the lowest-level laws of nature is only an
introductory example. Hegel’s view is
not that the unalterable laws of nature are absolutely fundamental
to everything. The rotation of the solar system as an
example of something governed by laws of nature. But this does not
mean that Hegel sees everything as
so governed. Hegel will argue that the behavior of living beings, for
example, is teleological, and not governed by exceptionless laws.[14]
And Hegel will argue that the laws of nature are only a very limited,
incomplete, or minimal form of reason for the events they govern;
teleological reasons for the behavior of living beings will turn out to be a
more complete form of reason—closer to “the absolute.” And it is not life
but rather Geist or spirit that
will turn out to manifest the most complete or absolute form of reason of
all. So the laws of nature will turn out to be relatively less important in
Hegel’s philosophy, even if a good place to begin.

This is to say that Hegel will consider many different
accounts of what is a reason for what, in many different senses of a
“reason.” This will include those metaphysicians who think about reason as “Grund” (ground), in a sense that Hegel thinks inadequate. Thus Hegel
will complain about the way reason is generally understood by advocates of
the “Satz des Grundes” or
principle of sufficient reason (WL 446/6:82). But what Hegel thinks most
important here are those aspects of Leibniz’s use of the principle which
direct us rather toward a more complete form of reason, which he calls here
“teleological ground” (teleologische
Grund). Elsewhere Hegel uses “Vernunft”
(reason) to speak of reasons in the world, as when he says of the movement
of the solar system that the “laws are its reason,” or the “Gesetze sind die Vernunft desselben” (LPH 12:23/34). And we will see
that the term Vernunft establishes
an important connection to Kant. But these are in any case different ways of
thinking about reasons. The forms of independence most important to Hegel,
like what he calls “Selbstständigkeit”
(self-subsistence), do not concern at base independence of our point of
view—they rather raise issues about whether something is an independent
reason for itself; Hegel will argue that this is a standard by which
teleological phenomena will be of greater interest in a metaphysics of
reason than phenomena governed by exceptionless laws.

3. Kant’s “Transcendental Dialectic” Critique of the Metaphysics of
Reason

I turn now to Kant’s critique of metaphysics in the
“Transcendental Dialectic” of the first
Critique, so that we can later
understand Hegel’s response. The thread running throughout this section is
Kant’s account of “the faculty of reason” (Vernunft). The basic idea here is that truth is too profligate to
serve as any kind of guiding goal for theoretical or rational inquiry. For
there are innumerable truths about any number of things, many of them
trivial or of no special theoretical interest—such as the exact number of
cookies in each box of cookies, the exact distance in miles between the box
and the Golden gate bridge, and which of these numbers is higher. The
“faculty of the understanding” is capable of coming to true judgments about
what is the case in the empirical world; but the understanding nonetheless
requires guidance from some more discriminating norm or goal, and it is the
“faculty of reason” that provides the guidance. Because reason’s role is to
guide, Kant must characterize reason in terms of an “aim” or “end” (Zweck) or even an “interest” (Interesse).
And one way of expressing the goal of reason is to say that we are
interested, insofar as we are rational, in underlying grounds or conditions
of all kinds, or in following a “regress from the conditioned to its
condition” (A523/B521).

But Kant exposes difficulties by arguing that this last
idea about conditions is not yet an adequate characterization of a guiding
aim of the faculty of reason. In a way, conditions threaten to be still too
profligate to guide. Imagine
for example that we know of some X that is conditioned; if so,
the faculty of reason will leave us unsatisfied and interested in the
underlying condition. But what if the underlying condition, Y, is also
something merely conditioned? Then the same dissatisfaction of reason will
persist. So there are many conditions that do not in themselves satisfy
reason’s interest. Theoretical inquiry is concerned in conditions only
insofar as we assume that, in finding conditions, we are making some
progress toward knowledge of an underlying or unifying
completion in the series of
conditions, or a complete reason—progress toward what Kant calls “the
unconditioned.” And so Kant argues that, if we find the condition for
something, reason requires that “the condition of its condition thereby has
to be sought”; thus:

…we see very well that the proper principle of reason in general (in its
logical use) is to find the unconditioned for conditioned cognitions of the
understanding, with which its unity will be completed. (A307/B364)

Another
way of putting this point is to say that reason seeks complete unity, or a
unified underlying complete explanation. And this is the goal or norm by
which reason provides the guidance needed by the understanding: “the law of
reason to seek unity is necessary, since without it we would have no reason,
and without that, no coherent use of the understanding” (A651/B679).

It is worth noting an example crucial to the
“Transcendental Analytic,” insofar as it is the topic of the “Second
Antinomy”: the understanding might achieve knowledge of an object extended
in space; reason will then take an interest in
why it fills this volume of space,
or the underlying “conditions” in the sense of the parts. Note that this is
not the question of the epistemic
reason how we know that or whether the object is extended. The question
about underlying conditions (Bedingungen) here is a question about the reason—in the sense which
the metaphysics of reasons is interested in reasons—why the object fills
that space.[15]
The idea of the “unconditioned,” then, is
not any epistemic idea, such as
the idea of something knowable with absolute certainty. Nor is it
fundamentally the idea of something independent of our perspective, or the
idea of something knowable only from a God’s-eye view. It is the idea of a
complete reason why—for example, the complete reason why something extended
fills that region of space.

But Kant is
aiming to further argue that we cannot ever attain knowledge of anything
unconditioned in this last sense. In other words, we seek the objects of
theoretical inquiry under the description of
the unconditioned, or
the complete reason why—not under
the an epistemic description like the absolutely perspective-independent, or
the knowable with absolute certainty, or
the knowable only from a God’s-eye-perspective, etc. But it turns
out, Kant will argue, that what we seek under the former description is in
fact unknowable for us. Thus Kant begins the A-preface to the
Critique with the resulting tension between reason’s interest and
the limits of our knowledge:

Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it
is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to
it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot
answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason…

Our
attempts to answer these questions cannot be conclusive, and so we fall into
endless controversies. And this is metaphysics: “[t]he battlefield of these endless
controversies is called metaphysics” (Avii-viii). Note that “metaphysics” in
this sense has nothing fundamentally to do with absolute
perspective-independence, nor with any idea of a God’s-eye view.
“Metaphysics,” in thissense is
concerned fundamentally with the complete reasons for things, or the
unconditioned. It is only on grounds of a further argument that our form of
cognition cannot achieve knowledge of anything unconditioned that the
derivative result will follow: metaphysics amounts to an interest in
something (the unconditioned) that is unknowable from our point of view.

The resulting problem will be this: We seek insofar as
we are rational or reasonable to reach conclusions concerning the
unconditioned. But, on the face of it, our choices with respect to the
existence of unconditioned grounds are that they exist or that they do not.
And Kant argues that holding either view is unacceptable.

Consider first the affirmation. Kant argues that we are
naturally tempted by it. That is, we are naturally tempted to mistake the
maxims or rules guiding reason for objective principles: “In our reason …
there lie fundamental rules and maxims for its use, which look entirely like
objective principles” (A297/B353). So given reason’s demand that we seek the
unconditioned, we are tempted to affirm this further principle: there must
always be unconditioned grounds
for everything conditioned. This is essentially the “principle of sufficient
reason” (PSR) of the early modern rationalists. The idea is that everything
not a sufficient ground or reason of itself—everything conditioned—must have
an external sufficient or complete ground or reason, or an unconditioned
ground. “Rationalism,” in the sense I will use it, is not fundamentally a
position in epistemology. Rather, rationalism is any view in metaphysics
that endorses a PSR and argues on that basis for the existence of “God” in
this sense of a sufficient reason for everything.[16]
But note that Spinoza is a paradigmatic rationalist—he employs the PSR in
arguing for his “God” at Ethics
IP11D. But of course his God is not something separate from the rest of
reality, but the single substance that everything real is “in.” This is
irrelevant to his status as a paradigmatic rationalist (in my sense here):
he argues from a PSR to the existence of an unconditioned ground of
everything, or “God” in that sense.

Kant’s response to rationalism is subtle. On the one
hand, the interest of our faculty of reason leaves us naturally tempted by
rationalism. For example, consider the rationalist arguments for God, in the
rationalist sense of “that the concept of which contains within itself the
‘Because’ to every ‘Why?’ … that which is in all ways sufficient as a
condition.” Kant holds that reason itself makes this rationalist argument
tempting: this is even “the natural course taken by every human reason”
(A584-5/B612-3). On the other hand, the Transcendental Dialectic argues that
we must learn to avoid asserting theoretical knowledge of such rationalist
conclusions.

The problem with rationalism is supposed to be this: it
must either contradict itself, or else come to depend on an untenable
combination of epistemological claims. The threatened self-contradictions
are developed in the first two Antinomies. The contradictions arise from a
specifically rationalist line of argument, whose major premise is that there
must be completion or sufficiency in a series of conditions: “The entire
antinomy of pure reason rests on this dialectical argument: If the
conditioned is given, then the whole series of all conditions for it is also
given; now objects of the senses are given as conditioned; consequently,
etc.”[17]
The problem arises specifically with respect to a regress of conditions in
time (the first Antinomy) or space (the second). It is best, for the purpose
of understanding Hegel’s response, to briefly sketch the second Antinomy.

First, imagine accepting what I will call Assumption A:
beginning with an object extended in space, there is an infinite regress to
smaller parts. But a rationalist must insist that there is a sufficient
reason why there can be any composition here at all. And the only way to
find such a reason within the regress
would be to hold that there are smallest, simplest parts which explain
why there is anything here out of which things could be composed.[18] So
a rationalist looking for completeness within the regress must reject the
Assumption A and instead endorse smallest spatial parts.

Second, we can try Assumption not-A: there are such
smallest parts in space. If they occupy some region of space, then the
rationalist must insist that there is a sufficient reason why they occupy
that region. Within the regress in space, the only thing that could provide
such a reason would be smaller parts which, conjoined, occupy that region.
So for any simple or indivisible part in space, the rationalist must hold
that there are underlying parts—which is a contradiction.[19]
And so the rationalist must reject the Assumption not-A, and hold instead
that the regress to smaller parts extends infinitely down.

But it is important that there is a popular way for the
rationalist to escape contradiction. He can say that there is another
option—unlike both smallest parts and infinite descent into
composition—specifically insofar as the sufficient reasons for things might
be comprehensible and knowable only by a divine intellect. What God would be
able to comprehend is how there could be an infinite regress of conditions,
and then also, outside of the infinite
regress, an underlying sufficient condition for all of them. For God
need not follow a regress one step at a time; Leibniz holds that God could
grasp even an infinite series all at once: “there is always, underneath, a reason … even if it is
perfectly understood only by God, who alone goes through an infinite series
in one act of the mind” (Ariew and Garber, 303). Applying this escape
strategy specifically to the regress in space, we get this view: insofar as
complete reasons might be such as to be comprehended only by God, there
could be an infinite regress of smaller parts in space, which
also has a ground or reason from
outside itself in the form of
non-extended monads.[20]

But Kant will respond that the rationalist escape route
requires both affirming and denying oneself the possibility of knowledge of
the same thing. It is not that Kant thinks we are entirely unable to
comprehend the idea of an intellect able to grasp immediately even an
infinity of everything—this is a central feature of what Kant calls
intellectual intuition, which “would grasp and present the object
immediately and all at once” (8:389). But if the rationalist speaks of
sufficient reasons knowable only by such an intellect, superior in kind to
our own, then Kant argues that the right conclusion is that we cannot know
anything about them—not even whether there exists any such thing. Of course,
there is a difference between knowing that something exists and knowing more
about it; but Kant argues that if the latter requires divine knowledge, then
there is no principled reason why the former should not as well. For
example, Kant complains that those who defend Leibnizian monads “would have
us be able to cognize things, thus intuit them, even without senses,
consequently they would have it that we have a faculty of cognition entirely
distinct from the human not merely in degree but even in intuition and
kind,” possessed by “not by humans but beings that we cannot even say are
possible, let alone how they are constituted” (A277-8/B333-4).

Note that this criticism need not rely on commitments
from Kant’s specific claims about the limits of our cognition, its
discursivity, etc. There is rather here an independent line of argument,
which will offer support for
Kant’s specific claims about our epistemic limitations. The point about
rationalists is that they box
themselves into an untenable epistemic position: they can escape from
the contradictions of the Antinomies only by claiming that reality is such
as to be knowable only by a divine mind; but this involves claiming to know
something while also claiming it is unknowable.

Now to this point I have commented only on Kant’s
critique of rationalist
metaphysics. But the “Transcendental Dialectic” is not just developing a
worry about rationalist metaphysics; it is developing a worry about
metaphysics more generally. It presents a problem that is supposed to affect
everyone, not just the rationalist. The root of the problem is that we
need the faculty of reason, and its guidance by means of ideas of
the unconditioned, if we are to pursue any theoretical inquiry at all, and
even if there is to be any “coherent use of the understanding” (A651/B679).
We cannot rationally hold that there are no unconditioned grounds while also
trying to discover some—which is to say, while still engaging in any
theoretical inquiry at all. So the denial leads to the skeptical
renunciation of the project of reason or theoretical inquiry, “the
euthanasia of pure reason,” or “skeptical hopelessness”
(A407/B433-4).

A quick way to get a glimpse of the point is to
consider a famous scene in Molière: the character Argan is asked why opium
interacts with us by putting us to sleep. And Argan responds, famously, that
opium has a dormitive virtue or power. Of course, we now know better. We
know what opium is made of, and why it does what it does. But consider the
farthest point to which we have advanced in the regress of powers or
dispositions. Say we find, at the limit of our current knowledge, particles
X and Y, where X’s attract Y’s. We might still ask why do X’s attract Y’s? A
contemporary Argan would say: on
account of their attractive power. But is it rational to take this
answer for any sort of conclusion? Kant would deny it. And he would explain his answer in
this way: reason demands that we assume, at least for the sake of inquiry,
that there is something more complete to be said in answer to the
why-question. And reason demands that we inquire into what that more
complete explanation might be. True, one could conceivably deny that there
is anything more satisfying. But then one has no grounds left for saying
that reason favors further inquiry over Argan’s self-satisfaction or utter
lack of intellectual curiosity. And
that is skeptical hopelessness.

While I think that there is more to say in defense of
this last point, this will have to wait for another occasion. For our
purposes, the important point is that Kant’s “Dialectic” aims to present a
seemingly insoluble problem for everyone. We can affirm or deny rationalism,
but this

leads reason into the temptation either to surrender itself to a skeptical
hopelessness or else to assume the attitude of a dogmatic stubbornness…
Either alternative is the death of a healthy philosophy though the former
might also be called the euthanasia
of pure reason. (A407/B433-4)

Now Kant raises this problem in order to argue that
there is one acceptable alternative, and only one—something he thinks is new
and radical. We must conclude that our own knowledge is fundamentally
limited or restricted. More specifically, we must conclude that there are
specific, principled limits of our knowledge—limits that will preclude
knowledge of whether or not there is anything unconditioned, so that we can
continue to be guided by ideas of the unconditioned without threat of the
rationalist conclusion that we can know any such thing (thus precluding
further theoretical inquiry) and without threat of the denial that there is
any such thing (thus rendering further inquiry without reason of guidance).
What compelling account of our knowledge would leave it limited in
principle, in just this way? Kant’s answer is that our understanding is
merely “discursive”, or dependent for content on intuitions from a receptive
faculty of sensibility, and so also dependent on the
a priori forms of our sensibility:
space and time. And “in sensibility, i.e. in space and time, every condition
to which we can attain in the exposition of given appearances is in turn
conditioned” (A508/B536). This account of our limitations gains support in
this way: it provides a principled reason for denying knowledge of anything
unconditioned, including knowledge of whether or not there is anything
unconditioned, thus explaining why the threat of the Antinomy does not
justify complete skeptical hopelessness.

Precisely this limitation of knowledge is what will
allow Kant to hold that we can and must always assume, for the sake of
inquiry, that there are unconditioned grounds—and then seek them in inquiry.[21]
So reason demands that we pursue the unconditioned as an end, a goal; and
reason provides perfectly legitimate “regulative” or
guiding principles; but we must learn not to mistake this for
knowledge of anything unconditioned. We can thereby at least make progress
“asymptotically” (A663/B691) as Kant says at one point, toward the goal of
reason that guides scientific inquiry. And thus Kant claims to avoid the
“skeptical hopelessness,” or the “euthanasia of pure reason,” but without
slipping back into the “dogmatism” of rationalist assertions.

This line of argument for the limitation of our
knowledge is clear to see in Kant’s own gloss of the argument of the
Transcendental Dialectic. Kant says:

That which necessarily drives us to go beyond the boundaries of experience
and all appearances is the
unconditioned, which reason necessarily and with every right demands…
(Bxx)

True,
we cannot know that there really
is anything unconditioned. But precisely because we still must conceive the
unconditioned as a goal, we must conceive of it as unknowable, as “present
in things … as things in themselves.” Otherwise, “the unconditioned cannot
be thought at all without contradiction” (Bxx). So the threat of
contradiction concerning the unconditioned forces us to distinguish the
objects of our knowledge from things as they are in themselves, and conclude
that our knowledge is merely limited or restricted.

It follows that there is a sense in which metaphysics
is impossible for us. Recall that
reason gives rise to “endless controversies” on “the battlefield …
called metaphysics” (Aviii). If reasonis responsible, then these are controversies about the unconditioned.
The Dialectic arguments supports the conclusion that such metaphysics is
impossible for us: we cannot legitimately assert knowledge of any conclusion
about this topic. But this is not to say we can or should forget these
controversies: Kant says just here that reason “cannot dismiss”(Avii) those metaphysical questions. He later says that “we will always
return to metaphysics as to a beloved from whom we have been estranged”
(A850/B878). True, some philosophers
think that they have become indifferent to such metaphysics, but Kant
sees them as unknowingly entangled in metaphysics: they “always unavoidably
fall back into metaphysical assertions, which they yet professed so much to
despise” (Ax). So the point is not that metaphysics stems from an optional
or misguided interest in knowing things from a God’s eye point of view. It
stems from a rational, legitimate, an ineliminable interest in the
unconditioned or complete reasons; and we must keep in mind that inescapable
interest, precisely in order to guard against mistakenly thinking that we
can attain theoretical knowledge that would satisfy it.

4. Hegel’s Non-Rationalist, Post-Kantian Metaphysics of Reason

When we turn back to Hegel, we now have a choice. We
need not read Hegel as if his basic goal were to defend one or another
approach to explaining the possibility of knowledge and or meaning. So we
need not take the basic orienting question to be whether Hegel is more of a
realist or anti-realist about that matter. We can instead read Hegel as
interested fundamentally in the issues raised by Kant’s Transcendental
Dialectic critique of the metaphysics of reason. So the basic orienting
question would be how Hegel’s view relates to the options Kant distinguishes
there: the rationalist affirmation of the existence of unconditioned
grounds, the denial of the same which Kant labels skeptical hopelessness,
and Kant’s limitation of our knowledge. Does Hegel go for one of these
options, or develop some other response to thissame set of issues?

This orienting question makes it easy to see that
traditional metaphysical readings, although not always explicit about it,
tend to portray Hegel as holding a version of precisely the metaphysical
rationalism targeted by Kant. For they portray Hegel as arguing on the basis
of an assumption that everything must be completely explicable, so that
there must be some complete reason for everything; such readings often take
Hegel as accepting Spinoza’s claim that the whole of everything is a ground
of everything, and then modifying Spinoza’s account of that whole. But that
would be to say that Hegel merely assumes a principle that Kant has argued
against, rather than engaging philosophically with Kant’s critique of
metaphysics.

My aim here is to show how the a metaphysics of reason
approach makes possible an alternative reading—one which Hegel is not
arguing for a return to specific metaphysical view specifically attacked by
Kant. The idea is that Hegel follows Kant’s rejections of various basic
options: Hegel agrees that problems concerning complete or absolute reasons
are inescapable, so philosophers cannot claim to be indifferent to them;
Hegel agrees in rejecting rationalism, or the claim that complete or
absolute reasons would be something unconditioned, and that there must
really be something unconditioned; Hegel also agrees that rejection of the
existence of any sort of complete or absolute reasons would be an
unacceptable form of “skeptical hopelesness.” But all this agreement does
not mean that Hegel accepts Kant’s limitation of our knowledge and denial of
the possibility of our reaching conclusions in metaphysics. Rather, Hegel
argues that Kant sees only these options because he views the matter in part
from the perspective of the aim—so important to earlier section of the first
Critique—of defending the faculty
of the understanding. So Hegel will argue that, if we begin with Kant’s own
account of reason, and re-work philosophy from this perspective, then we can
build a new kind of metaphysics—one that finds a new way to avoid both
rationalism and yet also skeptical hopelessness. In particular, Hegel will
argue that complete or absolute reasons should not be understood as the sort
of unconditioned grounds which rationalists think are real, and which Kant
thinks are legitimately of interest to reason. Once we better understand
completeness or absoluteness of reasons, we will be able to legitimately
assert knowledge of them, without asserting rationalism.

To see the break between Hegel and rationalism,
consider Hegel’s account of law-governed natural phenomena, as for example
in the Logic discussion of natural
kinds of things that are linked by exceptionless laws—which Hegel calls
“Chemism,” emphasizing that he is not just talking about chemistry but
lawfully interacting kinds of any sort.[22]
Here Hegel argues that the nature of such a lawfully interacting thing is
such that it cannot be comprehended except in relation to others. As Hegel
says, “a chemical object is not comprehensible from itself alone, and the
being of one is the being of the other” (WL 6:430/728). What is it to be
some law-governed X? It is to react in a specific manners with Y’s, etc.
And, further, to be Y will be to interact in characteristic ways with Z’s
and X’s. Etc. So the “being” of things of such kinds will depend on
a whole interconnected network of kinds and laws within which that are a
part, or the network within which they are nodes. For law-governed
stuff, the “determinateness” of anything in particular is just one “moment”
of a larger “whole” or “Begriff”of the whole: it “is the concrete moment of the individual concept (Begriff)
of the whole, which conceptis the
universal essence, the real kind
(Gattung) of the
particular object” (WL 6:430/728).

The philosophical pressure towards this kind of
metaphysical holism has often been noted in more recent metaphysics, even
while holism is often resisted. For example, take Russell:

There are many possible ways of turning some things hitherto regarded as
“real” into mere laws concerning the other things. Obviously there must be a
limit to this process, or else all the things in the world will merely be
each other's washing… (1927, 325)

And
Chalmers aims to resist the same holism: “…this would lead,” he says, “to a
strangely insubstantial view of the physical world” (1996, 153).

In Chalmers and Russell, the aim of finding more
substance in things pushes in the general direction of the view that
physical reality is, in itself, mental or somehow akin to the mental.
Chalmers reads Russell as attracted to the view that “the intrinsic
properties of the physical are themselves a variety of phenomenal property.”
And Chalmers considers “protophenomenal properties” (1996, 154). Kant reads
Leibnizians as arguing in a similar manner: if there must be non-relational
inner features of things, then “what can I think of as inner accidents
except for those which my inner sense offers me? - namely that which is
either itself thinking or which is analogous to one” (A265-6/B321-2). A more
monistic form of rationalism would seek to dispel the seeming lack of
substance by finding an unconditioned ground in the whole of all such
interconnected kinds—we could also take the whole to be a mind or something
similar.

But none of these is Hegel’s view. Hegel’s view is
that, when we look to grasp a law-governed thing, it “gets lost” in
relations, lost in a regress of dependence; it “becomes something else than
it is empirically, confuses cognition” (Phän 3:190/149). Hegel’s view is
that lawfully governed things really are “strangely insubstantial” (as
Chalmers puts it). Another way to put
the point is to say that, when we look to lawful things, we find only the
slightest of reasons for what they
do at all. True, the laws are the reason why things do what they do. But the
laws are as they are on account of the relational natures of such things.
Which is to say that the natures of things are as they are on account of the
laws, and the laws on account of the natures, and so on. The regress into
relationality results in surprisingly insubstantial reasons.

Hegel’s anti-rationalist view is clearest where he
discusses the “weakness” or “powerlessness” (Ohnmacht)(e.g. PN §248) or a degree of “unreason” (Unvernunft)
(e.g. PN §250) in nature.
Lowest-level law-governed things are weak insofar as they lack a complete or
sufficient reason for why they do what they do. They falsify the PSR that is
definitive of rationalism. And the point is not that we tend to
mistakenly take lawful nature to be weak or unreasonable because we tend to
overlook some hidden inner side, like hidden mental grounds in physical
particles or in the whole of everything. Rather, lawful nature really isthis weakness, or really this degree of unreason. For example, the lack
of complete reason is a kind of contingency in the law-governed kinds or
forms:

In the sphere of nature contingency
and determination from without has its right, and this contingency is at its
greatest in the realm of concrete individual forms, which however,
as products of nature, are
concrete only in an immediate manner … This is the powerlessness of nature. (PN §250)

Hegel will later argue that in some cases, there is a
remedy for this lack of substance and reason. In particular,
some of the sum total of all the lawfully interacting stuff finds
itself part of different living beings—lions, tigers, trees, and you and I.
When we look to these higher-level beings, we find some of the substance
that had gone missing in lower-level lawful nature. Take a tiger, for
example. Why does the tiger have these sharp claws and the corresponding
capacities to catch and kill rabbits? Here we do not “get lost” in a regress
of dependence. The answer is not that rabbits have a disposition to be
caught, and so on. For the tiger has these parts and capacities on account
of something about the tiger itself: an account of the intrinsic end or
goal of self-preservation. As Hegel says, “the living thing is articulated
purposefully; all its members serve only as means to the one end of
self-preservation.”[23]
This intrinsic end or Zweck is
supposed to allow the nature of an organism to be manifest in the
determinate way that it relates to the environment, yet without its nature
merely dissolving into relations with others. An organism is “the real end
or Zweck itself … it preserves
itself in the relation to an other”
(Phän 156). This is supposed to make life a more complete form of reason,
specifically as compared to lawfully governed lower-level things. Or,
alternatively, a living being is more substantial—precisely in the sense
that lawfully interacting things are strangely insubstantial.

What is really
surprising here is that a living being will be more substantial, in the
above sense, than even the lower-level
law-governed stuff of which it is composed. This can seem surprising
when judged from the perspective of what Kant calls the understanding, from
which we expect that if X supports Y, then X had better be more solid than Y
in order to hold it up, as it were. But Hegel is arguing that matters are
different once judged simply from the perspective of the interest in
reasons, or the reasons why things do what they do. A tiger, for
example, could not exist without the existence of the underlying stuff of
which it is composed. But there is also a sense in which the natures of the
underlying stuff are a matter of indifference when it comes to what it does.
The tiger’s claw, for example, could have had the same capacities and yet be
realized in a variety of different underlying stuff.

Note, then, how Hegel’s conception of a complete or
absolute reason comes apart from Kant’s conception of the unconditioned: an
organism is, in a sense, conditioned
by or dependent on the stuff of which it is composed. But insofar as this is
a conditioning by something indifferent, this is no limitation of its status
as a reason for its own behavior. We can mark this distinction with terms
drawn from Hegel: dependence on an “indifferent base”[24]
makes no difference to the completeness of a form of reason. So to manifest
a complete or absolute form of reason need not mean depending on nothing—it
need not mean being unconditioned in this sense. And, since a complete form
of reason might depend in that way on something else, clearly a complete
form of reason need not be something on which everything else depends—it
need not be some form of the rationalists’ God. To be a complete or absolute
form of reason is rather to be something that does what it does on the basis
of what we might call a complete and internal “principle of activity.”[25]

Now organic life is supposed to be close to an absolute
reason, in this sense, but not the most complete form. Although there is no
space to even sketch the argument here, it is worth noting how Hegel puts
the point in terms drawn from Kant: “idea,” in Kant, refers to a conception
of something of interest to the faculty of reason; so Kant’s view is that
the “idea” is always a conception of something unconditioned. Hegel’s view
is that life (even if not
unconditioned) is a form of “the idea,” is more satisfying to reason,
although only a partial or incomplete form: “the idea is firstly life” (WL
6:468/760). But Hegel will argue that an absolutely complete intrinsic
principle of activity is realized only in the case of our own kind, or what
Hegel calls Geist or spirit. This is why Hegel will call
Geist “the absolute”: “the absolute is spirit—this is the supreme
definition of the absolute” (PG §384). Comparing life and spirit, then, the
former retains a smaller degree of the unreason of nature, and only the
latter is a complete or absolute form of reason, insofar as it is internally
self-determining, or free in this sense:

The highest level to which nature attains is life; but this, as only a
natural mode of the idea, is at the mercy of the unreason of externality …
whereas in every expression ofGeistthere
is contained the moment of free, universal self-relation. (PN §248An)

We can
know the absolute, in this sense—we can have absolute knowledge—in that we
can know something with an absolutely intrinsic principle of activity,
something that realizes a complete form of reason: we can know and
comprehend spirit. This need not mean that there is a complete reason for
everything. Nor need it mean that we can know everything—for there are many
things without a sufficient reason, which are not absolute. For example, if
basic physical particles lack any complete or absolute reason for what they
do, then knowledge of the absolute need not be any kind of complete
knowledge explaining the location and movement of every physical particle.
Knowledge of the absolute is knowledge of something with an absolutely
internal principle of activity—knowledge of spirit.

The resulting metaphysics holds that reality has a
hierarchical organization of levels.[26]
Everything is composed of lower-level stuff, in which is found the most
incomplete form of reason. Some of that stuff makes up living beings, whose
behavior has more complete reason, or is more completely explicable. And
some living beings have capacities of knowing (especially important will be
the capacity to know themselves) and meaning, and behave in correspondingly
distinct ways, because they are of the kind
Geist, and it is here that we are
supposed to find a complete form of reason.

Why doesn’t Hegel’s view, insofar as it is neither
rationalist nor Kant’s own denial of knowledge, lead to the skeptical
hopelessness Kant fears? First of all, Hegel’s view is that rational inquiry
does not and need not seek knowledge of the absolutely unconditioned. For it
need not have any interest in merely indifferent grounds. Rather, rational
inquiry seeks knowledge of the internal principles of things. Such inquiry
can be satisfied to increasingly greater degrees on the higher levels of
reality. And even within lawful nature inquiry can make a sort of progress
insofar as we discover at least a distant, imperfect echo of the sort of
independent principle of activity found on the higher levels. For example,
the whole network of kinds and laws within lawful nature is a distant but
imperfect echo of the sorts of biological wholes we find on higher levels.
It is comparable to, but “not yet for itself that totality of
self-determination” (WL 6:434/731-2). So we can have some success in
explaining nature insofar as we can find more distant approximations of the
idea throughout nature, even if these approximations are in truth
other than the idea. In Hegel’s
terms, nature is “the idea in the form of otherness” (§247).

We can put the final combination of claims in this way:
(i) Life approximates, but only Geist
or spirit completely realizes, a complete independent principle of
activity, or a complete manifestation of “freedom” and “the idea.” (ii)
Metaphysically speaking, nature does not depend on
Geist, but
Geist does depend on the nature in
which it is embodied—it “presupposes” nature. However, this is just
dependence on an indifferent basis, in the sense discussed above, so it is
no limitation of the status of Geist
as a complete form of reason, or as a manifestation of “the idea.” And
(iii) speaking now epistemologically, there is a kind of dependence of
nature on Geist. In particular,
the explicability of nature
depends on Geist: we seek to
explain nature insofar as we find there a distant trace of the kind of
self-determining system or complete reason that is fully realized only in
the case of spirit—so spirit finds, in this sense, traces of itself in
nature, we find the world to be our
world, in this sense. I will insert numbers for these points to note how
Hegel wraps them all together:

(i) As Geist is free, its
manifestation is to (iii) set forth
Nature as its
world; but because it is reflection, it, in thus setting forth its world, at
the same time (ii) presupposes the world as a nature independently existing. (iii) In the intellectual
sphere to reveal is thus to create a world as its being – a being in which
the mind procures the affirmation and (i) truth of its freedom. (§384)

In this way metaphysics can deal with the problems Kant
uncovers in the Dialectic. True, the Second Antinomy shows that rationalists
cannot accept there being only compositionality all the way down;
rationalists similarly could not accept the idea that lawful nature is only
relationality all the way down or around. But Hegel shows how to construct a
metaphysics that breaks with rationalism on this point, accepting an
anti-rationalist view, while avoiding the skeptically hopeless denial of the
existence of complete or absolute reason. The key is to argue that Kant and
the rationalists misunderstand what a complete form of reason would be: to
be a complete form of reason need not involve being a ground of everything,
nor being unconditioned; a complete form of reason would be rather something
with an intrinsic principle of activity of its own. Thus Hegel can argue
that there is an absolute form of reason—Geist—without
arguing that this is the sort of metaphysical ground of everything envisaged
by the rationalists. And Hegel can argue that we can know this absolute,
without having to somehow know everything or any supposedly complete
explanation of everything.

5. For the Metaphysics of Reason and Against Semantics-first
Metaphilosophy

I have argued that there is an alternative to
“non-metaphysical,” or “semantics-first” interpretations of Hegel, which
differ on matters philosophical rather than merely verbal. Semantics-first
interpreters sometimes argue that they have a trump card in that they can
best make sense of Hegel’s aim of engaging philosophically with Kant’s
critique of metaphysics; but my alternative can match this card, once
sufficient attention is paid to the “Transcendental Dialectic.” Once it is
clear that there is a viable alternative, we can easily see some advantages
of this metaphysics of reason approach.

To sneak up on the more complex issues concerning Kant,
it is helpful to start instead with Hegel’s response to empiricist critiques
of metaphysics. Empiricists will attack by arguing that metaphysicians
illegitimately take for granted the possibility of knowledge in metaphysics.
The attack is based on an epistemology-first metaphilosophy: it argues that
other projects in philosophy are subject to doubts about the possibility of
accounting for knowledge on such domains. But Hegel has a powerful response:
empiricists are in no position to complain that others merely take for
granted knowledge on a favored domain, because precisely in such attacks
empiricists do the same: “the truth
of the empirical, the truth of feeling and intuition is taken as basic”
(§39An). The skeptical worry that we should doubt any kind of knowledge that
is supposedly simply basic might be worrying for metaphysics, but only if it
is equally worrying for empiricism as well.
If we are to take such
epistemological worries as fundamental, then the only principled or
philosophical position, Hegel argues here, would be the more total
skepticism of the ancient skeptics.

Further, Hegel argues that empiricists do not provide
any alternative to metaphysics. Just as Kant takes “indifferentists” to
“always unavoidably fall back into metaphysical assertions, which they yet
professed so much to despise” (Ax), so too Hegel takes empiricists to
covertly advance their own metaphysics (§38An). And we have seen one respect
in which this is true: they hold a metaphysics of reason which takes
disconnected events as the basic reason for everything else.

Note that Hegel’s rejoinder to empiricism anticipates
Sellars’ “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” attack on “the myth of the
given”—as Sellars notes (1956, 253). But this is no reason to doubt that
Hegel pursues metaphysics. Hegel does criticize empiricism for taking “the
empirical … as basic” (§39An) or immediate or given. But is point in this
section is specifically to defend
a position in the metaphysics of reason against empiricist attack: to defend
“universal notions, principles,
and laws” (§38) which do not,
contra empiricists, signify only “alterations that follow one after the
other, and … objects that lie side by side” (§39).

Having looked at an epistemology-first criticism of
metaphysics that is empiricist, we can now turn to a parallel sort of
Kantian critique, considered by Hegel at the beginning of the
Encyclopedia:

One of the main points of view in the
Critical Philosophy is the following: before we embark upon the
cognition of God, or of the essence of things, etc., we should first
investigate our faculty of cognition
itself, to see whether it is capable of achieving this. (§10A)

Hegel
will dismiss this epistemology-first critique, with good reason: If our
cognition is suspect when advancing a metaphysics, then it would be equally
suspect when reflecting on itself. So reflection on our own cognition cannot
be shown to be necessary or even superior to metaphysics on ground of such
skeptical worries in epistemology. In Hegel’s terms, the epistemology-first
Kantian objection to metaphysics turns on the desire “to have cognition before
we have any,” and this is “as absurd as the wise resolve of Scholasticus to
learn to swim
before he ventured into the water” (§10An). The point is clear:
philosophy takes an interest in metaphysical topics, such as “God … the
essence of things, etc.”; the epistemology-first Kantian worry provides no
reason to refrain from such metaphysics; the only thing to do is to jump in
the water and try to learn to swim—which is to say, to start doing such
metaphysics, or to start thinking about “God … the essence of things, etc.”,
and to try to learn to think about such things well, rather thinking about
them unknowingly or uncritically.

Hegel does also think that engagement with metaphysical
questions about “God … the essence of things, etc.” prior to Kant tended to
be objectionably naïve or uncritical. But clearly Hegel’s worry about being
uncritical is not a worry about the lack of adequate prior epistemological
reflection on the fitness of our cognition. Rather, Hegel worries that prior
metaphysics had not sufficiently noted and responded to the dialectical
contradictions which the “Transcendental Dialectic” reveals within
metaphysics. Hegel dismisses the epistemology-first Kantian worry about
metaphysics; but he seeks to build a non-naïve metaphysics by beginning with
the Kantian consideration of metaphysics and reason in the “Dialectic.”[27]

Non-metaphysical or semantics-first interpreters of
Hegel might seek to retreat to the view that there is a fault-line in
Hegel’s work, dividing a good Hegel who commits to semantics-first
philosophy from a bad Hegel who violates his commitment. But I see no
evidence for such a fault-line. Imagine taking your pick of
any contemporary view, or
any historical view; call it view
X. We could then proceed to distinguish those claims of Hegel’s which would
fit well together with X in an overall philosophical project, and those that
would not. That we can make such a distinction is not adequate evidence for
Hegel’s philosophy being in tension with itself, or riven by an internal
fault-line. For it is no evidence that Hegel is at all concerned with X.
And, if it were evidence, then it would be evidence that there are such
fault-lines nearly everywhere in every philosopher’s work. In such cases,
without further evidence, one should rather conclude that the appearance of
a fault-line is an artifact of one’s choosing to view Hegel through the lens
of one’s own commitments, such as a commitment to the fundamentality
epistemology, semantics, or issues concerning anti-realism and the like.

True, one might specifically seek to understand Hegel
in a manner that will bring out connections with contemporary analytic
philosophy. And perhaps at some point near the middle of the 20th
Century the dominant analytic orthodoxy would have taken problems about
meaning or in semantics as fundamental, and rejected metaphysics by arguing
that metaphysical claims are meaningless. But there was analytic philosophy
before that point, and the trend for many decades since has been
away from that semantics-first
critique and back towards metaphysics.
As Zimmerman puts it:

There was a period when many analytic philosophers—perhaps even the
majority—believed that the problems of metaphysics were … demonstrably
meaningless… But it was a relatively short phase… (2004, xiv)

And it
is important to note something positive about this trend: it has reopened
the possibility of analytic philosophy learning from connections with the
history of philosophy. As Zimmerman says, the problems addressed by
contemporary analytic metaphysicians

….are not significantly different from those that faced the philosophers of
earlier eras; and they defend positions readily identifiable as variously
Platonist, Aristotelian, Thomistic, rationalist, Humean, and so on. (xxi)

So a semantics-first reading of Hegel could bring his
philosophy into contact with one
strand of analytic philosophy. But the same reading threatens to obscure
connections between Hegel and the more recent metaphysical trend, which
specifically opens analytic philosophy to learning from positions in the
history of philosophy—like Hegel’s. For example, just my short sketch here
brings Hegel into connection with five lively debates in analytic
philosophy, about: (i) the metaphysics of the laws of nature; (ii) the
comprehensive program of the humean position in analytic metaphysics, in
David Lewis and followers; (iii) the proposal that “ontological grounding”
is the subject of metaphysics, a kind of revival of an Aristotelian approach
(Schaffer 2009)—I argued above that Hegel’s approach starts with a
comparable but broader or more general notion of one thing being the reason
or why of another; (iv) the sort of monism which holds that the whole is the
“ground” for the parts, or “priority monism” (Schaffer 2010, esp. the
comparisons to Hegel at pp. 42 and 67); (v) the issues concerning
dispositions, their grounds, and the pressure toward a metaphysical holism
noted in Russell (1927) and Chalmers (1996). So we should not prefer
semantics-first readings of Hegel on grounds of a desire to bring Hegel into
contact with contemporary analytic philosophy; we can do at least as well by
reading Hegel in terms of the metaphysics of reason.

I now turn to the philosophical issue of
metaphilosophy, briefly setting aside the interpretive issues about Hegel. I
myself am convinced by Hegel’s rejoinders that there is no force to
epistemology- and semantics-first arguments that philosophy must begin by
setting aside metaphysics and focusing on the possibility of knowledge and
meaning. As Hegel argues, doubts about the possibility of meaning or
knowledge in metaphysics would apply as well to alternative projects in
epistemology or semantics. So I conclude that, if we are not to give up
philosophy in favor of total skepticism, we should proceed as Hegel
recommends: by jumping into the water and trying to learn to swim—or
beginning with the metaphysics of reason, and trying to learn to do it well.

Further, it seems to me that our thinking in terms of
the metaphysics of reason can help us to better find philosophical
significance throughout the history of philosophy, and so to better learn
from history. Hegel finds positive philosophical significance to build on
even in Anaxagoras, instead of dismissing his ideas as simply meaningless.
We too can in this way find philosophical significance not only in Hegel,
but in Spinoza, Aristotle, etc. Semantics-first arguments in philosophy, by
contrast, tend to seek to deny or closeoff
philosophical significance. Some analytic philosophers once argued, for
example, that all of metaphysics is simply meaningless. I think it best to
steer as far away from that model of philosophy as I can, because I think it
better to learn from the history of philosophy, and that this requires
accepting its philosophical significance. So for these reasons I favor the
metaphysics of reason metaphilosophy, according to which the basic questions
of philosophy concern what is a reason for what.

Note that this metaphysics of reason metaphilosophy
does not itself require denying the meaningfulness of questions in
epistemology and semantics about how to account for the possibility of
meaning and knowledge. I have not tried to show that there are no
philosophically significant issues here. Perhaps there is a way of making
the issues here precise as issues about reasons, so that the question is
whether an objective world is itself the
reason why we can know it, or
rather whether something about our cognition is the
reason for the distinction between subjective and objective. My
commitment to the metaphysics of reasons makes me open to such concerns. I
see no a priori reason to doubt
that they are even meaningful or philosophically significant. I do however,
for reasons noted above, find current debates between realist and
anti-realist approaches to such issues to display a frustrating lack of
agreement about what the real issues are. So I am pleased that my
metaphilosophy gives me no reason to think that such debate is in any way
fundamental or prior. I see no grounds why other debates about the
metaphysics of reason need be held hostage by lack of progress in debates
about anti-realism and the like.

In sum, coming back now to Hegel, recent debates about
his philosophy tend to take place against the background of the view that
problems concerning the possibility of meaning and knowledge are fundamental
throughout philosophy. But I have argued that there is an important and
promising alternative approach: we might instead take as fundamental
problems concerning what is a reason for what, as for example in several
familiar and recognizably metaphysical debates. This metaphysics of reason
alternative can do justice both to Hegel’s interest in such metaphysical
topics from history of philosophy, and yet also to the sense in which Hegel
engages philosophically with and accords great importance to Kant’s critique
of metaphysics. Once we see this alternative interpretive approach, it is
easier to notice that there are some prominent places in which Hegel himself
argues against the idea that there is any fundamentality or priority to
problems concerning the fitness of our cognition for knowledge or meaning.
Finally, consideration of Hegel can lead us in this way to the real and
lasting philosophical advantages of a “metaphysics of reason”
metaphilosophy. True, we can decisively resolve in this way neither the
broadest questions about Hegel nor, certainly, questions about what all of
philosophy is most fundamentally about. But thinking about Hegel can help us
to come to see that there is a neglected and surprising contender when it
comes to metaphilosophy. In this way, we can better appreciate the
underlying terrain on which conflicts within philosophy are still fought
today. And so I hope to have shown that we can learn something important
from Hegel when considering the question of what philosophy is all about.[i]

[7] Here
“non-metaphysical” interpreters of Hegel can follow
“non-metaphysical” interpreters of Kant; see e.g. Allison’s
explanation of Kant as fundamentally gathering together all previous
philosophy as “realism” committed to a “theocentric” model of
knowledge, and rejecting it all (1983, 19ff.).

[10] Whether
Hegel uses some entirely distinct conception of truth is another
matter; on my view, even his conception of truth will be driven by
the metaphysics of reason, so that “the truth of X” will sometimes
refer to a kind of reason for X.

[11] The debate
about whether Hume has a regularity theory focuses more specifically
on causality than laws; see Winkler (1991).

[15] Later, we
will see that Hegel criticizes this approach, arguing that there are
kinds of conditions which are no genuine sort of reason at all, so
that an absolute form of reason need not involve being
unconditioned.

[16] Compare
Curley: “Prospects for identifying a common rationalist programme
are better in meta­physics. One doctrine Descartes, Spinoza and
Leibniz did agree on was what Leibniz was to call the principle of
sufficient reason” (1995, 430).

[17] A497/B525.
In emphasizing this passage and my approach to the Transcendental
Dialectic here, I am following Grier (2001).

[18] By the
assumption, there would be “…no simple part, thus nothing at all
would be left over; consequently, no substance would be given”
(A434/B462).

[19] “…the
simple would be a substantial composite, which contradicts itself”
(A435/B463)

[20] Or,
similarly, Spinoza can take the analogous escape route, holding that
there is an infinite regress within space and time—and then
also add that the whole series is grounded insofar as it is “in” and
so dependent on one substance or God.

[21] On the
need to assume, for the
sake of inquiry, that there is something unconditioned, although we
cannot have knowledge, see
e.g. A307-8/B364.

[24] For
Hegel’s use of the term “indifferent base,” see for example the
above discussion, from “Chemism,” of WL 6:430/728. I am coining the
term “principle of activity” to contrast with this.

[25] See for
example Hegel’s use of the term “principle of activity” in
discussing Aristotle’s view of life (e.g. VGP 19:174).

[26] For
example, in introducing the PN, Hegel says that there are different
orders of kinds, a hierarchical structure of reality: “the orders
not only serve to give us a general view, but form a hierarchy (Stufenleiter) of nature itself” (PN §246Zu 9:20/10).

[27] There are
some complicated issues here concerning the
Phenomenology and its relation to later works. Here I will just note
that Hegel places a similar rejection of Kantian epistemology-first
criticisms of metaphysics at the beginning of the
Phenomenology (§73ff.). It is of course true that the body of the
Phenomenology literally
begins with what is in part an epistemological discussion in
“Sense-Certainty.” But whatever the point of this beginning might
be, the point is not that such epistemological issues must be
“first” in the sense of having
priority or being fundamental, so that philosophy would have to
begin with reflection on cognition and the construction or deduction
of an account of the possibility of knowledge, before it could
legitimately treat other topics.For that claim is clearly rejected in the “Introduction.”

HEGEL:Encyclopedia
cited by § number, with ‘An’ indicating
Anmerkung and ‘Zu’
indicating the Zusatz. All
other references to Hegel’s writings are given by volume and page
number of Werke in zwanzig
Bände. Edited by E. Moldenhauer und K. Michel,
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970-1. I use the following
abbreviations and translations:

KANT: Aside from references to the
Critique of Pure Reason,
all references to Kant’s writings are given by volume and
page number of the Akademie edition of Kant’s
Gesammelte Schriften
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1902-). I use these abbreviations and
translations: